Make-out parties . . . goofy yearbook jokes . . . barfing after a night of drinking too much beer . . . Sound familiar?
It should, since it pretty much describes high school anywhere in the United States between the end of World War II and the advent of safe spaces. Actually, it’s easy to imagine the same things are still going on.
But in the Age of Donald Trump, beware the strategic thinking of progressives in Washington, the capital of false moral equivalence. As in: conservative white male equals privileged serial rapist.
Take the just-concluded Supreme Court confirmation process, in which the 11th grade circa 1982 became a legitimate area of inquiry for disqualifying signs of toxic masculinity. Which now makes your basic American boyhood a career-ending minefield.
The experts say we live in a politically polarized society. No we don’t. We live in a politically planned society. And part of the plan is to confuse political issues to the point where the only people who can stand paying attention are opportunity-seeking members of Congress.
Talk about high school. The sight of politicians prejudging alleged teenage behavior from 36 years ago would have been comic, if the stakes weren’t so high. No wonder Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee tried everything in their failed effort to keep Brett Kavanagh, now safely confirmed, off the high court.
It will be hard to forget how badly the Left’s last-minute smear job backfired. Testimony from star witness Christine Blasey Ford was supposed to portray Kavanaugh, without any evidence, as a 17-year-old sex fiend. Instead what she delivered was a spacy four-hour trip down a New Age memory hole that proved nothing.
It can’t be overlooked that Ford has a Ph.D. in educational psychology, a field where concepts like “toxic masculinity” often originate before they’re taught in schools.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter,” she recalled, flashing back to an uncorroborated assault three decades old.
“You’ve never forgotten that laughter?” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), carefully coaxing her to say more.
“Uh-huh,” Ford nodded with a tremble.
Since we’re on the subject, it’s pop cultural lore that high school boys can be divided into four categories: cool guys, jocks, nerds, and losers. Conveniently, so can members of the U.S. Senate.
Just when it seemed like Ford might freak out, Leahy, a longtime leftist cool guy, was there for her. How cool? He was once an honorary roadie with the Grateful Dead.
“At one concert I was on the stage off to the side, and I got a call from the White House operator,” Leahy wrote in LIFE about his time with the Dead. “Sting was warming up the crowd. The secretary of state came on the line and asked if I could turn the radio down. I told him it was Sting. Silence. Sting the rock star. Silence again. I told him I was onstage at a concert. He said, ‘Do you have time at your rock ‘n’ roll concert to take a call from the President [Bill Clinton]?’”
No word on what the two talked about, but it’s not hard to guess with Clinton on the line and the senator surrounded by groupies.
“Would I consider myself a Deadhead?” Leahy asked. “With pride.”
The far-out look on Ford’s face said she could relate. But how many other women felt the same way as they watched her used as a human prop by one Democratic committee member after another.
Sen. Richard (“Rambo”) Blumenthal (D-Conn.) was eager to get in on the act. Blumenthal, who had lied for years about serving in combat during the Vietnam War, knows how to talk to high school girls. He met his wife when she was 16 and he was 31.
“Let me tell you why I believe you,” Blumenthal said to Ford. “You have been very honest about what you cannot remember. Someone who’s composing a story can make it all come together in a seamless way, but someone who’s honest . . . is also candid about what he or she cannot remember.”
For the record, Ford could not remember when the alleged attack happened or where it happened; also the four eyewitnesses she claimed could place her and Kavanaugh at the scene of the incident in question all have sworn they weren’t there.
Reminding everyone of his own suspect history with the truth, Blumenthal pointed out, “I speak from experience . . . ”
The camera caught Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a former prosecutor and Air Force colonel, saying something off-mic that looked like “Yeah, right, pal.”
Congressional hearings are designed to eliminate surprises, but this one had two that will go down in history: the 11th-hour introduction by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) of Ford’s letter accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape; and Graham’s angry denunciation of Feinstein and her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for turning the proceedings into a “search and destroy” mission.
“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” Graham said. “If you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.”
“You all want power,” he added. “God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this . . . ”
In a matter of minutes Graham skyrocketed to the top ranks of conservative cool guys for turning the tide in Kavanaugh’s favor.
But it wouldn’t be long before one of the biggest losers in either party retiring Sen. Flake (R-Ariz.) was seen making plans for another delaying tactic with his Democratic doppelganger Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). The pair of natural allies may present themselves as do-gooders—Coons with a graduate degree from the Yale School of Divinity and Flake, a former Mormon missionary in South Africa—but both are cunning backroom operators, ready to do whatever it takes to advance their own ambitions. Which got their buddy act on “60 Minutes” before they faded into the background.
Now that their votes for and against Kavanaugh have cancelled each out, they’re old news.
What’s not old news is how all of this will play with voters in the upcoming elections.
Without question, Republicans are enthused and Democrats are angry. The problem for the Left, though, will be preventing that anger from getting out of control. Throwing trash cans through bank windows, as occurred in Oakland, California during Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2012 and after the 2016 presidential election, will not be helpful in winning the House or Senate next month.
The Democratic Party badly overplayed its hand during the Kavanaugh hearings, but the worst part may not be losing a seat on the Supreme Court, but fallout from their blatant use of Christine Blasey Ford as a political tool. That had to send a shocking message to all women. Democrats aren’t making their lives better. In fact, if Ford is any example, they’re doing just the opposite.
Now that Kavanaugh is on the court, if his confirmation hearings had been a high school exam, the Democrats’ grade would be an “F” followed by a note from the guidance counselor: “Work needs improvement to avoid flunking out.”
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